This invention provides a series of identification tools that can help reduce improper or even fraudulent product returns. Retailers often lose revenue due to the misuse of return policies and subsequently pass lost revenue back to the customer in the form of price increases. These issues can be addressed by either capturing or affixing unique alphanumerical codes to product that are sold using the invention and subsequently assigning unique seller account identification code to each user, i.e. a “user identification” while maintaining a database of the transactions of each of the products identification codes and the identification of the user offering the sale of the product. A mechanism is then provided to store these identification codes and the identifications of the user submitting the code attached to the product whenever a transaction occurs.
The system can evaluate a return transaction (e.g. such as a purchaser returning a product to a seller) by comparing its identification code to the product code, entered into the system, prior to the sale of the product to the purchaser. The system will alert the user who is entering the product description with a notice of approval as long as there are no discrepancies with the product identification code. Discrepancies can be set as policies where the system can accept or reject the placement of the product into the sales management system, as well as reject the authorization of the product return based upon the policies set by the sales administrator.
Policies can be set to include mismatching identification codes, tampered with products, or materially different products that have had identifiers removed by the purchaser prior to returning the product to the seller. Additional information, including a stock keeping unit code, a listing timestamp, and a product photo can be employed for making additional comparisons which help to further identify potential misuse of return policies.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to utilize and compare product-associated information in order to evaluate transactions to ensure that marketplace return policies are not being violated.